Pictured:  the last of the 16 dozen krumkakke I made last week.

Grandma Dallelie’s Krumkakke Recipe

6 eggs, room temperature 1 C. sugar 1 C. melted butter 1 tsp. whipping cream 1 C. flour 1 tsp. (rounded) ground cardamom

I was in my early teens when Mom told me that Dad had been adopted shortly after he [...]]]> Longtime readers may recall that I’ve written a post or two about my father over the years, including some background about the rather… shall we say… unusual circumstances in which he was put up for adoption.

I was in my early teens when Mom told me that Dad had been adopted shortly after he was born.    What?!  My father was not the biological child of Grandma Tild and Grandpa August?!  This was pretty interesting news all by itself, but as I was to learn, there were details about this particular adoption that made it far beyond merely “interesting”.

To summarize the story for those of you who haven’t heard it before:  When my father was a two weeks old baby he was found in a hotel room in downtown Minneapolis, along with a note from his mother asking that a good home be found for him.

Imagine the effect such a story would have on a thirteen year old.  To me it was like something out of a silent movie melodrama.  Not exactly the baby left in a basket on a doorstep scenario, but close enough.    I was excited; instantly eager to find out everything I could about my dad’s birth family, but I soon learned that Dad himself was not.

You never know what you might find out, he said.   You might end up learning something you wish you hadn’t.  I know who my parents are.  I know who my family is.   Let’s leave it at that.

And so we did.  He never changed his mind; he really just never cared to know. After he died in 1979 [at the age of 54; heart failure], my mom and sister and I would sometimes talk about the adoption tale and  speculate about the  family we would never know. It was a way of holding on to Dad somehow.   We’d imagine what kind of people Dad’s birth family might have been, and consider the possibility that we could have aunts and uncles and other relatives living right here in town, right now, all unbeknownst to us.

All the information we had about  Dad’s birth family came from an article that we were told had been on the  front page of a Minneapolis newspaper  the day he was found, but none of us had ever actually seen that article.

The story we had always heard was that the baby was two weeks old when he was found.  What was the exact date he was found?   What did the article say, exactly? I wanted to see that article.   At the time, this was in 1980, the Minnesota History Center hadn’t been built yet,  but the main branch of the Minneapolis Public Library had the  Mpls Tribune and the  Mpls Journal on microfilm going all the way back to their beginnings, so that’s where I began.

All of the official documents  – birth certificate, Social Security card, his military service discharge papers, etc — had Dad’s  birthdate listed as May 23rd, 1925.   I always wondered: how did they know that May 23rd was his birthday? How could anybody know exactly what his birthdate was?  Did they just make a guesstimate?

Hmm, well, this baby looks around 2 weeks old. Let’s count back about 2 weeks and say his birthdate is….May 23rd!

Counting ahead 14 days from May 23rd  would be June 6th.   For leeway I decided to start with June 1st.   I started with the evening paper, the Minneapolis Journal.  Sure enough, when I got to Saturday June 6th, there it was in the lower right hand corner of the front page:

[click on image for full size.  Be warned:  it's big]

This was it.  This was the sum total of everything we knew about my Dad’s birth family.

Or at least the total of everything we knew until March 2009.

After I found the Minneapolis Journal article, I looked through a few more days of the Journal and several days of the (morning) Minneapolis Tribune, but didn’t find anything else. The library only had microfilm for the Journal and the Tribune, so I figured we had exhausted all the possibilities.  I assumed that was it; there weren’t any other articles.  Still, my sister always said that she’d heard there was a newspaper article which mentioned something about all the couples who inquired at General Hospital, wanting to adopt the “deserted” baby boy.   If there was such an article, what paper was it in, and when?

During the winter of 2008-2009 the spouse and I started going to the Minnesota History Center.  Usually on  Saturdays; usually spending most of our time in the microfilm library, which houses records of  newspapers from all over the state, including all of the Minneapolis and St Paul papers.   I decided  once again to search for articles beginning with Saturday June 6th 1925.  I’d never considered that the St Paul papers might have something about the baby found in a  Minneapolis hotel room, but I decided to take a look anyway just for the heck of it.     Lo and behold — on page 2 of the (evening) St Paul Dispatch for Saturday June 6th, 1925:

What?!

Chicago?!

“A young mother with blonde hair”!

“born May 23rd in Chicago, weighing 9 3/4 pounds”!!

I freely admit it:  I nearly fainted right there in the middle of the microfilm library.

So there you have it.  That was a little over a year ago.  In the ensuing months I’ve spent a good deal of time poking around at Ancestry.com, mainly comparing 1920 and 1930  census records for Cook County (Chicago).    In subsequent visits to the Minnesota History Center we found three more articles from various Minneapolis and St. Paul papers, from June 6th and June 7th.   And yes, two of those articles mentioned that many people inquired at General Hospital, wanting to adopt the “deserted” baby boy.

I’ve got hundreds of photos and documents that need to be scanned and catalogued; I’ve got a lot of research to do.  More than that, I’ve got a lot of research to do on what kind of research I need to do.

Bluntly,   I just don’t feel like blogging about anything else at the moment.    If there are any more details to be found out at this late date about the family of that baby who was born 85 years ago today, I’d better not wait much longer to search for them.  I’m pushing 60, for crying out loud!

Going forward, if you notice long stretches of inactivity hereabouts,  there’s a good chance it will be because I’m off somewhere tracking down something having to do with my Dad’s birth family.

So okay then.  Be nice, don’t pester each other, and talk quietly amongst yourselves til I come back.   Thanks.   See ya.

~

This is what I look like in 2010.  On a good day.  Photo taken after a long afternoon spent traipsing around Canal Park and downtown Duluth on a cold, rainy, blustery Saturday in April.

…Instead of holing up in the nearby DECC, where, at the time this photo was taken, I believe the DFLers [...]]]>

This is what I look like in 2010.  On a good day.  Photo taken after a long afternoon spent traipsing around Canal Park and downtown Duluth on a cold, rainy, blustery Saturday in April.

…Instead of holing up in the nearby DECC, where, at the time this photo was taken, I believe the DFLers were on their  second of six — or seventeen, or thirty, I don’t  remember exactly how many — ballots,  trying to decide on a candidate to endorse  for this year’s gubernatorial race.    I don’t know about the DFL, but I had a perfectly lovely time.  Walked out on the point; watched the lift bridge go up & down; went thru the much-loved Lake Superior Marine Museum for the eleventy-billionth time;  had a gorgeous steak and a Cuba Libre at Grandma’s.

So now you’ll know how to recognize your kindly old (57 years old to be exact) Auntie Tild if we should happen to run into each other somewhere IRL.       Needless to say, if you require the proprietors of the blogs you frequent to be: 1) youthful, 2) wrinklefree, or 3) thin, then you’d better just move along.   Trust me, I’ll get over it.

~

So, night before last at around 8pm I suddenly had this brilliant idea:    I would go down to the basement and search through about a dozen steamer trunks and footlockers to find ALL of the family slides;  find ONE PARTICULAR SLIDE out of hundreds no, make that well over a thousand;  convert the [...]]]>

So, night before last at around 8pm I suddenly had this brilliant idea:    I would go down to the basement and search through about a dozen steamer trunks and footlockers to find ALL of the family slides;  find ONE PARTICULAR SLIDE out of hundreds no, make that well over a thousand;  convert the slide to a digital file with the slide scanner I bought more than a year ago and had never used nor even taken out of the box;  spruce up the image in case it had faded over the past 49 years;  crop it and make it as nice as possible and put it on a flash drive and take it over to Walgreens before work at 6am yesterday & have an 8×10 print made so I could give it to my sister when I brought all the gifty things for the grand-nieces & nephews over to her house at noon so that everything would be done and delivered before the snowstorm hit…

Mission accomplished — and, hurray for me,  it only took until 1:30am to get the photo into halfways usable shape!

That’s my sister and me  (and I?)  in the photo.  It was taken in December of 1960, the year my sister was Lucia at the American Swedish Institute.

She was 12, I was 8.   Angelic, ain’t we?!

God Jul och gott nytt år to all, and to all a good (quiet, peaceful, lucid) night.

~

Status report:   everything’s fine, or as close to fine as it ever gets.

The [...]]]> Jeez it’s really been a while since I posted anything here.   A hearty  Sorry about that hereby goes out to anyone who has felt neglected or who gives a good goddamn about what happens or doesn’t happen at this blog.

Status report:   everything’s fine, or as close to fine as it ever gets.

The homestead (fabled remote fortified compound Tildebunkport) continues to crumble into decay in that charmingly quiet, unassuming Scandinavian manner.  Anybody know someone who would replace the brickwork on the front of my house?   For free?

Now that the warm weather’s here, the spouse bikes 20-40 miles/day whenever the weather permits.  With all that biking, he’s so conditioned that the last time he took a stress test (last summer) his heart rate never got up to the target rate even after pedaling for a full 30 minutes.  The techs finally just gave up and said Yeah, okay, we get the picture, you passed, now get outta here.  Showoff.

The offspring are finishing up finals, working long hours,  and consequently making some fairly big  $$  and feeling the need to blow off some  steam & relax — therefore spending as much $$ as possible on repeat viewings of Star Trek,  dinner dates @ fancy restaurants  & geekware shopping at Microcenter.

As always, my job keeps me v busy, altho these days I’m limiting my OT to no more than 10 hrs/week.   Life’s too short, my droogies, in case you hadn’t noticed.
I’m starting to get serious about getting another dog (it’ll be 3 years in August since the  passing of the Venerable Pup).

So.  Anyway.  You get the general idea.   For the sake of posting something — anything — today,  here’s a hodgepodge o’  stuff from yer adorable old kindly Auntie Tild.    Happy Thursday!

~~~

Before I make this next statement, let me just point out that my health is good.  I’m doing well.   Healthier than ever, really. 
Having said that,  I realized the other day that even if healthcare reform were to happen tomorrow (which it won’t) if I were to get cancer or some other likely to be fatal disease, I would prefer to go without treatment, with all that that implies,  rather than risk my family being driven into bankruptcy by my medical bills. 
I mean, really:  pay hundreds of thousands of dollars, possibly even millions, to temporarily stave off a disease that’s gonna kill me anyway?  I think not.   Is there any way I could make this a legally binding directive?

I’m pretty sure it would be a bit beyond the purview of either Compassion and Choices or Death With Dignity, but I think this ought to be a choice a 56 year old person with grown children should be able to make and be assured that her wishes would be respected. Hmm?

~~~~

From the Pictures I Did And Then Forgot About file…

Because that’s how the Rude One described him a few months back, and because you all know what a miserably literalist artistic vision your kindly old Auntie Tild has.

~~~~

Song Lyrics Interpreted and Improved Upon:  a free service from tildology.com!

Today’s improved song lyric:

I Need To Play Far Away*

(original title “Spinning”, by Zero 7, from the album Simple Things)

Was it loneliness that brought you here,
Broken and weak?
Was it tiredness that made you sleep?
Have you lost your will to speak?
Was the earth spinning round?
Were you falling through the ground?
As the world came tumbling down
You prayed to god: what have you done?

Free me from these chains
I need to change my way
Heal these broken wings
I need to play far away
Far away, far away

Was it emptiness that made you weep?
No more secrets to keep
Was it bitterness that gave you time
To forget your self?
Was the earth spinning round?
Were you falling through the ground?
As the world came tumbling down
You prayed to god: what have you done?

Free me from these chains
I need to change my way
Heal these broken wings
I need to play far away

Free me from these thoughts
Long forgotten down below
Take these anxious words
Give them life to carry on
Carry on, carry on
Free me from these chains…

*Well  that’s what it ought to be titled.  That’s what it sounds like to me, anyway

Spinning – zero 7

~~~~

There was a lot going on:  A heatwave across much of the nation had killed 238 people, but President Calvin Coolidge vowed nevertheless to travel to Minnesota to make an address at the Norse-American Centennial celebration at the State [...]]]> Here’s the front page of the Minneapolis Journal for Saturday evening June 6, 1925:

There was a lot going on:  A heatwave across much of the nation had killed 238 people, but President Calvin Coolidge vowed nevertheless to travel to Minnesota to make an address at the Norse-American Centennial celebration at the State Fairgrounds.  The President’s special railroad car “has been filled with ice cakes and electric fans to keep it cool until he embarks.”

In a few days Minneapolis was also going to have elections for city offices including Mayor,  Treasurer, Comptroller, judges and aldermen. The Journal’s endorsements or “recommendations”, or lack thereof, were usually terse and to the point.  In the Mayoral race:  “No recommendation because the citizens know both candidates.”  In the 12th Ward:  “This beautiful Ward is not represented by a strong man.  Vote for Ekberg to replace Jenson.” Boy howdy, those were the days, huh?

What I really want to direct your attention to, tho, is the little item in the lower right corner of the page:

Way to make an entrance, Dad.

~

Next:

“That baby looks familiar”

Grandma Tild will not be denied

The woman at the bus stop

and

The Detroit Police Dept.  Vice Squad!

Stay tuned, kids.

~